Most conveyor chains used for heavy duty conveyors experience a great amount of stress due to the combined effect of tension, bending, and torsion, which in turn, may cause failure in the conveyor.
In order to properly maintain and prevent failure of a conveyor chain, the chain must be continuously monitored. Current diagnostic systems monitor chain links in conveyor chains by utilizing strain gauges directly mounted to the chain links to measure the inherent tension loading acting on the conveyor chain. However, measuring the tension loading on the chain links may not be a true representation of the conditions that actually exist throughout the conveyor chain. Conveyor chains also experience other failure causing forces such as bending and twisting while moving down the conveyor line, which are not measured in current systems. Current systems also lack a practical means of providing continuous power to the system that drives the data acquisition hardware, thus resulting in frequent interruptions to the conveyor line for replacing batteries and downloading the data collected from the strain gauges. Furthermore, current systems lack effective warning signals indicating imminent failure of the conveyor chain to the conveyor operator.
Therefore, there is a need for a conveyor diagnostic system that employs a method for measuring multi-directional forces acting on a link of the conveyor chain, which is representative of the condition of the conveyer chain. In addition there is a need for a system that is capable of providing a continuous stream of real time data of the forces acting on the chain to the conveyor operator. Furthermore, there is a need for effective indicators for warning the conveyor operator of failures the chain is experiencing.